Energy [r]evolution 2009 - A sustainable global energy outlook

Oct 2008

Global market for renewables is booming. Decades of technical progress have seen renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines, solar photovoltaic panels, biomass power plants, solar thermal collectors and many others move steadily into the mainstream.The global market for renewable energy is growing dramatically; in 2007 its turnover was over a US$ 70 billion, almost twice as high as the previous year. The time window for making the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, however, is still relatively short. Within the next decade many of the existing power plants in the OECD countries will come to the end of their technical lifetime and will need to be replaced. But a decision taken to construct a coal or gas power plant today will result in the production of CO2 emissions and dependency on the resource and its future costs lasting until 2050.Regarding transportation, before new technologies such as hybrid or electric cars or new fuels such as bio fuels can play a substantial role in the transport sector, the existing large efficiency potentials have to be exploited. In this study, biomass is primarily committed to stationary applications; the use of biofuels for transport is limited by the availability of sustainably grown biomass.

By: Greenpeace International - European Renewable Energy Council (EREC)